NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Sean C
Date: 2023 May 25, 20:00 -0700
This topic reminded me of the following post from another forum I frequent:
"The Soviet Union, inadvertently, helped the US develop satellite navigation.
A few hours after the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957, Two American physicists, William Guier and George Weiffenbach, at Johns Hopkins discovered that by measuring the Doppler shift from the beeping satellite, it was possible to accurately locate the satellite.
The following year, they were tasked to reverse the analysis and locate a receiver on the Earth from a known satellite position. This they accomplished in 1958. In 1959 the US Navy's Transit program was developed. It became the first operational satellite navigation system in 1960 and helped targeting the Polaris SLBM... which was mostly targeting Soviet Union targets."
Honestly, I'm not sure if there's any truth to the above ... but it makes for a good story anyway.
Cheers!
Sean C.
